Pope Francis Was A Climate Activist

Pope Francis, who died Monday at the age of 88, 
was a climate activist who frequently spoke of 
the dangers it poses to humanity. 

Much is obviously being written this week about Pope Francis, who died Monday at the age of 88.

Many aspects of his life and his role as Pope stood out, and one of them was the fact he was a climate activist. 

"Over his 12 years as head of the Catholic Church, Francis repeatedly raised the problem of human-caused global heating from burning fossil fuels and he encouraged people - including world leaders  - to do something about it."

It wasn't surprising from the very beginning that Pope Francis was an environmentalist. He was the first pontiff to take the name of St. Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of animals and ecology. 

It's also no surprise that the MAGA crowd in the United States was no fan of Pope Francis, given how it's a drill, baby drill crowd who thinks climate change is a hoax.  Our buddy Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Crazy, Georgia responded to the pontiff's death (without naming him directly)  by writing on X:

"Today there were major shifts in global leadership. Evil is being defeated by the hand of God."

If Greene detested the pope for his climate activism, she's got plenty of evidence, so I'll give her that much. 

NPR again: 

"In 2015, Pope Francis issued a papal letter - or encyclical - titled Laudato Si.  It recognized climate change as a global problem with significant consequences, especially for the poor. He criticized developed countries like the United States and China, which have contributed the most planet heating pollution. Francis reserved the most severe criticism for the 'wealthier sectors of society, where the habit of wasting and discarding has reached unprecedented levels.'"

Francis had said poorer nations, which contributed the least to climate change, should get more aid from developed counties that had caused a larger share of climate change. 

That thought was a key element of the Paris Climate Agreement, which then-President Obama and other world leaders agreed to later in 2015. 

NPR notes that the 2015 Pope Francis encyclical inspired a number of Catholic climate activism groups.

In recent years, the Pope stepped up his climate rhetoric and activity.

In 2018, according to the Washington Post, he even gathered oil executives - including leaders from BP and Royal Dutch Shell - at a 16th century villa, urging them to transition from planet-warming fossil fuels to clean energy sources.

In a 2021 BBC broadcast, he listed climate change as among the top crises facing the world, right up there with the then-raging COVID-19 pandemic and deep economic difficulties around the world.  

Pope Francis in 2023  released another document that focused almost exclusively on climate change. He wrote,  "....with the passage of time, I have realized that our responses have not been adequate, while the world in which we live is collapsing and may be nearing the breaking point."

The pope's words on climate basically were preaching to the choir.  For all his work on climate, 'I'm not sure he moved the needle much on climate attitudes.  But the Pope's efforts surely did affect some hearts and minds, and inspired climate activism among certain groups of Catholics who agreed with his stance. 

Catholicism  is essentially a conservative religion, but at least here in America, climate change does not resonate with conservatives at all, be they Catholic or of some other religious persuasion. 

As the Washington Post explains:

"There is little indiction that Francis's activism shifted attitudes among American Catholics, In a 2023 Pew Research Center poll, 44 percent of U.S, Catholics said the Earth was warming because of human activity, compared with 46 percent of all U.S. adults. 

There was a sharp political divide. 82 percent of Catholics who identified leaned Democrat called climate change a major problem, compared with 25 percent for Republicans." 

Of course, we don't know how the next Pope will deal with climate change, if at all, since we don't know who that will be quite yet. 

But Pope Francis's calls to action on climate were one of many indications he was truly a man of the people, not just the elite. That's an increasingly rare trait among world leaders these days.